Deploying Total Quality Management on Construction Sites: Inhibiting Factors

Abstract

Total Quality Management (TQM) potentially improves business results, greater customer orientation and satisfaction, worker involvement and fulfilment, teamwork and better management of workers within companies. Considering that construction has historically been an industry reluctant to implement change, it has been slow to embrace the concept. Consequently, it has remained behind where it should be on the implementation of TQM. Generally, contractors do not apply TQM beyond head office management. While several companies have attempted to introduce TQM within their management operations, they have struggled to transfer this effort to their construction project sites. This paper reports on a study identifying through a literature review and survey of contractors those factors that hinder the deployment of TQM on construction job sites. The study highlights that several of the necessary TQM “success” criteria are in reality management issues. This finding confirms the integral and pivotal role of management in TQM. In order to deploy TQM successfully on construction sites, construction project management and site workers need to be empowered, involved and trained in TQM principles. The study shows that construction companies need to invest more of their TQM training budget on training their workers to be self-motivated to improve the quality of their work. Further, the study confirms the importance of involving subcontractors and suppliers in the TQM effort. In particular, contractors should address their obsession with the bottom line and change the practice of predominantly awarding subcontracts based on lowest bid.